Energy reliability at Teesside plastics company

Posted by: Sarah

We recently supplied three Q-VAr® dynamic reactive compensation systems at Stockton-based injection moulders, Mitre Plastics. The company aims to constantly achieve 100% uptime on all plant, equipment & tooling and we were delighted to carry out a preventive maintenance project on their electrical system.When an electrical system is running close to its protection limits, extra care may be needed in the summer months when things run a little warmer and increase the possibility of a protective circuit breaker trip. At Mitre Plastics, very high start-up currents meant a real risk of circuit breaker tripping that would lead to production downtime.To reduce this risk and bring start-up currents down in line with protective devices, Enspec’s Q-VAr® systems have been installed to provide dynamic reactive power compensation from zero to full output within a single 20ms cycle. As an added benefit, the Q-VAr® systems will also eliminate the site’s reactive power charges to deliver ongoing cost savings.Dave Veal, Technical Manager at Mitre Plastics said, “We take pride in how well we can maintain equipment and infrastructure to avoid breakdown. To do this we are all multi-skilled, and we are constantly developing our preventive maintenance plans to deliver the optimum service level.Our 26 injection moulding machines are working 24 hours per day and on-time in-full delivery performance is a pre-requisite for our business. Therefore, we have to ensure that our electrical systems are robust and totally reliable.”It was important to turn this project around quickly to ensure that the systems were commissioned before the rise in ambient temperature in the summer when problems are most likely to occur.